Did you go shopping on DealDash.com during Black Friday Week? If so, I’m sure you noticed a lot of great auctions and holiday deals. DealDash had special Black Friday promotions like an increased time as highest bidder multiplier, up to 90% off the final sales price of the auction, and Leaderboard Auctions. These features offer incentives to bidders, so sometimes it makes sense to adjust your bidding strategy in an auction and invest more bids than you would normally. Of course, the good news is that we could always BIN if we didn’t win. Here are some things that motivated me during Black Friday Week to adjust my bidding strategy.
Motivation #1
The first thing that motivated me was the DealDash features of 5X, 4X and 3X times on the clock. My progress meter to completing my level was near the end and I had 1,900 free bids waiting for me to collect. Therefore, my main focus was taking advantage of that extra time on the clock.
Most likely, many other shoppers were in the same boat and were motivated by the increased Time As Highest Bidder multiplier, too. I did not really care if I won the auction or not as long as I was bidding enough to move that clock all the way to the right, which was my main focus. It worked. I did not win my auctions, but I collected my free bids, so all was not lost.
Motivation #2
The second thing that motivated me was the Leaderboard Feature. Some shoppers are experts at taking the lead to qualify for free bids and knowing just when to leave to move on to other auctions where they can qualify for more free bids there, too. In fact, it appears some shoppers have it down to a science in knowing how to use that feature to rake in lots of free bids.
I thought I had it down to a science, too. However, it doesn’t always work out the way we might expect. A couple times I had so much lead time that I thought it was safe for me to leave the auction. I thought the auction would sell before anyone had a chance to catch up to me and overtake the lead. I was wrong. I seldom won as many free bids as I thought I would, but I learned a few lessons. First, when we have already qualified for free bids and the auction gets down to only one competitor, we might be better off to cancel our bids and allow our competitor to win to prevent anyone else from “stealing’ our free bids away. Second, if we want to remain in the lead during the Leaderboard feature, it’s important to check back and keep a close eye on the bidding.
Motivation #3
The third thing that motivates me is the 90 percent off the selling price feature. I don’t worry about the selling price if I only have to pay 10 percent of it at the end. Usually, I stop bidding when the selling price of the auction starts getting higher if I would have to pay the full amount. What we need to keep in mind is that other players are most likely thinking the same thing. Therefore, we might end up with too many players determined to shop until they drop, so it could be a very long auction.
I always look at the dates my competitors first started shopping on DealDash because it is often easier to beat new shoppers who don’t have much experience. However, sometimes those new shoppers surprise me at how long they are willing to hang-in-there. They must be reading all the tips I’ve been writing about in my blogs!
What can we do?
If we find we are not winning auctions, what can we do? That is the question. When I looked at the closing prices of some of the auctions I saw that some customers still won great bargains in spite of the fact that some shoppers were willing to hang in an auction longer. When I saw that, the next question I had was, “Why not me?”
When I looked at what the winners were doing, I would have to say the answer is to that question is that I remained stuck too long on one or two auctions. Many winners were bidding in auctions all over the place. So the answer to my last question is to diversify. The next time DealDash runs a huge special I plan to diversify, diversify, diversify, and then I’ll see if that works out better for me. What will you do?
This sponsored blog post was submitted by: Barbara L. Sellers. Barbara was compensated by DealDash for this blog post. Blog posts are written by real DealDash customers. The opinions and advice here represent our customers’ views and not those of the company.